It is the world’s deadliest song, a musical composition so lethal that merely to hear it hummedmay induce suicidal tendencies. It is “Gloomy Sunday”, public menace of such potentiallyepidemic proportions the BBC was compelled to ban it for decades. Indeed, if contemporarynews reports and eyewitness accounts are to be believed, no other song comes close to it forsheer morbidity.“Helter Skelter”? The Manson murders were horrific, to be sure, but the role of the Beatles’song in those tragic deaths was incidental at best, and in the end, seven lives were claimed,the number of fragile souls, meanwhile, to have succumbed to the unrelenting lugubriousnessof “Gloomy Sunday” may number in the hundreds if not the thousands.“Better By You, Better Than Me”? When played backwards, a US lawsuit alleged, this 1990Judas Priest song prompts listeners to “do it” and commit suicide. But how deadly can asong be which must be listened to backwards? “Gloomy Sunday’s” impact is direct andinstantaneous. One need only recall the story of the Roman shop boy who, hearing a beggarhum it, handed the man his money and jumped from the nearest bridge. Hungarian pianistand composer Reszo Seress wrote the original music and lyrics for Szomorú Vasárnap –Gloomy Sunday – in 1933, while heartbroken over the break-up of a romance. Though localpublishers initially rejected the song as too despairing, a new version with less forlorn lyricsby poet Laszlo Javor became an instant hit – and began claiming innocent lives almostimmediately.The song’s first victim, it is said, was the woman for whom it was penned. In the wake ofits initial success, Seress’ ex-lover poisoned herself, leaving a suicide note of just two words:“Gloomy Sunday.” Hers was but the beginning of a wave of “Gloomy Sunday” suicides thatravaged Budapest in the 1930s. According to a US newspaper report from the time, “Budapestpolice have branded the song ‘Gloomy Sunday’ public menace No. 1 and have asked allmusicians and orchestras to cooperate in suppressing it, dispatches said Today.”No one was immune, the article claimed. “Men, women and children are among the victims.Two people shot themselves while gypsies played the melancholy notes on violins. Somekilled themselves while listening to it on gramophone records in their homes. Two housemaidscut their employers’ linens and paintings and then killed themselves after hearing the songdrifting up into the servant‘s hall from dinner parties.”Seress was never prosecuted for the havoc his song unleashed (though fate may have caughtup with him in 1968, when he leapt to his own death), but he and Javor alone can hardly beheld responsible for “Gloomy Sunday’s” death toll. Like a plague, the song has spread, passedalong by some of the most reckless and reprobate “artists” of our times.Paul Robeson introduced the English version in 1935. Billie Holiday immortalised it in 1941.Björk, Ray Charles, Marianne Faithfull, Serge Gainsbourg, Diamanda Galas, Pyotr Leshchenko,Kronos Quartett – this list of infamy goes on and on. And now we can add to it theultimate act of music industry callousness and irresponsibility – the release by PiranhaRecords of a collection of 10 new versions of “Gloomy Sunday” from around the world,plus the Billie Holiday masterpiece and the very Hungarian original for your digitallyremastered listening pleasure.Go ahead, listen to it if you must. But don’t say you weren’t warned. And should you beone of the fortunate ones to survive this ordeal, have the decency and good sense notto recommend it to others. Piranha Records must not be rewarded for their cynicismand betrayal of the public trust. Above all else, they must be discouraged from releasing“Gloomy Sunday vol. II”, which our sources say is already in the works.

Selling Points• worth telling unique story about the song• 10 new versions of the welll known song Gloomy Sunday• call for Proposals for new song versions from the Piranha Arts/WOMEX network• variety of genres from a capella, hip-hop, instrumental, latin to pop• artist from all over the world - Argentina, Brasil, Colombia, Cuba, Hungary,Mozambique, Poland and USA• two remastered original versions from Billie Holiday and Pál Kalmár included• famous participating artists with a wide reach of audience• same-titled movie Gloomy Sunday - A Song of Love and Death (1999)• part of an established CD series from Piranha Noir Available from 13.05.2016